Farmstead record WLP 038 - Farmstead: Threadbare Hall

Threadbare Hall is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular L-plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in an isolated location. Only the farmhouse remains with modern sheds on site (S1-4).

Recorded as part of the Farmsteads in the Suffolk Countryside Project. This is a purely desk-based study and no site visits were undertaken. These records are not intended to be a definitive assessment of these buildings. Dating reflects their presence at a point in time on historic maps and there is potential for earlier origins to buildings and farmsteads. This project highlights a potential need for a more in depth field study of farmstead to gather more specific age data.

Threadbare Hall is a Grade II listed late 16th/early17th century timber framed 3 cell house. The principal range is oak framed and plastered, retaining remnants of historic pargeting on its north and south elevations. The building has a reed-thatched roof in 5 bays, with decorative cut ridge and a tall offcentre axial chimney stack with square-set, grouped shafts. This is an early stack constructed from narrow bricks. There is a lower, two-storey timber-framed and smooth-plastered rear wing with end chimney, and attached in line at the rear is a single-storey shed. Both rear structures are red-clay pantiled with timber bargeboards and cappings. The house has an almost complete set of vernacular timber mullion-and-transom and mullion windows, with metal glazing bars. Their metal casements are generally hung on pintle hinges. These are considerably later than the building, dating to the 19th century. The principal range of the house follows the 3-cell lobby entry plan that was standard in N Suffolk at the time of construction, in which the front door and staircase are housed beside a large chimney stack serving the two principal rooms on each floor. At ground floor level, these rooms have heavily-wooded ceilings with chamfered oak transverse beams with decorative stops. The rear range, which is shown on the tithe map of 1846 and appears significantly earlier, is also timber framed, although the gable end and chimney stack are of C19 brickwork. The attached shed is post 1846 but had been constructed by the time of the first Ordnance Survey map of 1884. It had a smaller and lower mono-pitched structure attached to its E gable, its sectional form described in the paint finish of the shed gable. This structure has been demolished since the 1978 map. First shown on the 1884 map were two outbuildings close to the house. The larger was parallel to it at the rear, forming a U-shaped footprint with the farmhouse. The second, smaller building was N of the rear range of the farmhouse. By 1904, the larger building had gone and the other was reduced in size and was demolished by 1978.

There is map evidence of three separate phases of farm buildings on the site, the first a large threshing barn with off-centre porch, its footprint suggestive of a C17 origin. This is shown on the tithe map of 1846, set back to the SE of the farmhouse and forming a close group with it. At this time, the farmstead was owned by the Heveningham Hall Estate and the farmhouse, fields and ponds were tenanted by Samuel Goddard. The house and threshing barn also appear on the Hodkinson’s map of 1783, although they are not accurately portrayed on this small-scale map. Between 1846 and 1884, the threshing barn was replaced by a range of Victorian farm buildings constructed in a regular courtyard L-plan. These were slightly further S of the farmhouse than the threshing barn had been and there was a vehicular access from the road along their S side. They had been demolished by 1904. By 1978, a third range of much larger farm buildings had been constructed S of the vehicular access from the main road, even further from the farmhouse (S5)